Spelt Flour Cinnamon Rolls with Mascarpone Frosting

Sometimes I think people get the wrong idea of what my kitchen looks like.

They assume my kids eat quinoa patties for breakfast, kale salad for lunch and braised lamb with mint sauce for dinner every night and sugar is a dirty word and something like a cinnamon roll fall under the “he who shall not be named” category of forbidden words.

My little chef Vivi, has been wanting to make cinnamon rolls all week. I did what many parents do and used the cinnamon rolls as a reward after a long day of errands and being as quiet as a church mouse during meetings that I had for work. We played hard outside and then came in to warm up and had a blast baking and coming up with a recipe.

You could buy cinnamon rolls in a tube, pop them open, throw them in the oven and frost them with whatever that is that comes in that plastic tub stuck in the butt of the tube. Sure they will taste just fine, your kids will gobble them down but in my opinion those aren’t cinnamon rolls. They are processed, industrialized, cinnamon roll like products.

Just take 10 more minutes and make them from scratch. Work in some math problems with your kids while measuring out the ingredients. Let them make a little mess with the flour. Teach them how to knead dough (not necessary so perfect opportunity to just take a minute and practice), let them steal some bites of the cinnamon sugar combo and make cinnamon rolls that are not perfectly shaped.

This mascarpone frosting takes just a minute to make and has 4 ingredients. The frosting in the butt of the tube has probably three times that number. Take the time to make treats and sweets from scratch and you will feel good about eating the result of your effort. Eating healthy can simply mean eating unprocessed foods, by taking the time to avoid those industrialized ingredients you are automatically eating better!